Handbags: A Love Story by monica botkier

Author:monica botkier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

Graduate Jokes bag, Richard Prince for Louis Vuitton, Spring 2008.

Lulu Guinness

LIPS, 2004

Lips bag, Lulu Guinness, New York City, September 2013.

Melanie Galea TheStreetMuse/Trunk Archive

L ips have long been a beloved motif in art—just think of Man Ray’s Observatory Time: The Lovers (1936), Salvador Dalí’s Mae West Lips Sofa (1937), and René Magritte’s Shéhérazade (1950). While countless designers have incorporated them into their work—Diane von Furstenberg, Yves Saint Laurent, and Elsa Schiaparelli—Lulu Guinness has made puckered lips all her own.

Guinness’s iconic Lips clutch made its debut in 2004 in red-and-gold padded snakeskin before spinning off into more than thirty versions, such as Swarovski-studded or with flag appliqués, as well as jewelry and cosmetic cases in a vanity travel collection. The popular molded Perspex model of 2008 features an equally wide range of variations—from a rubberized “matte” Lip to the 25th Anniversary edition of 2014 with a silver mirrored finish—each created from a bespoke mold. The motif is such a signature that Guinness has recast the lip into zip pulls and Christmas ornaments. For Guinness, lips are fun, playful, glamorous, and flirtatious. Her Lip clutch is all those things—and it makes you smile.

And that is precisely the ethos behind her line, founded in 1989. She has designed bags in the shape of a house, featuring embroidered windows, climbing ivy, and a cat; a box of chocolates, complete with the individual chocolates up top; and a pail filled with red roses, now in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum. “I don’t like being too serious about design. Which is why minimalism really turns me off. It’s too cold. I like humor,” Guinness told the Straits Times in 2000. Guinness, like her designs, is unapologetically feminine, with a girlish 1950s vintage streak.

“I love the unexpected. . . . I like working out how a bag will open and close, that you lift up a skirt, or it stays shut by putting the roof on top of it. Trying to have an idea that’s never been had before. That’s the sort of thing I’ve loved, having moments of inspiration. And I still do.”

— LULU GUINNESS, Vanity Fair, January 2006

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